As Strong As Death
by kilara25
Summary: When a human girl is placed on trial in a human court for the murder of a vampire, Eric's job as Sheriff is to see that justice is done. Sookie/Eric AU, follows the plot of Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers
1. Testimony

The human girl in the witness stand is very, very pretty. Eric is going to enjoy draining her.

Her name is Sookie Stackhouse, and she is on trial for the murder of a vampire by the name of Bill Compton. Eric can barely think the words with a straight face. A human. Being tried in a human court of justice. For the murder of a vampire.

Sometimes, Eric feels every day of his thousand-odd years.

The trial is a sop to the human authorities from the American Vampire League, who wish to prove that their societies, their _values_ are compatible. Eric finds the very premise of the entire display as insulting as it is farcical. He is Sheriff of Area Five, in which territory Bill Compton had resided. Vengeance ought to be his, by rights. He resents furiously the implication that he is lawless, that this tedious, protracted human ritual is a superior mechanism for uncovering truth.

There is no question in Eric's mind of the girl's guilt. But he has not arrived at this conclusion lightly. The evidence is clear. And justice is not the less just for being swifter, more final than humans find palatable.

But the evidence of vampires is meaningless to humans. And it's not really the girl who's on trial here.

There are only four vampires involved in the trial; three jurors, and one assistant district attorney. The girl will undoubtedly be acquitted.

But that will not be the end of the matter, if Eric has anything to say about it.

The girl gazes out over the courtroom with wide eyes. If appearances are anything to judge by, she is the epitome of blamelessness. She's very young, very attractive, with wavy blonde hair and a golden tan displayed to perfection by her virginal white sundress. Had Eric spotted her elsewhere, he might have taken some pains to acquire her for an evening's entertainment. Now, though, her attractions will merely sweeten the execution of his duty.

She will be freed by this human court. And then Eric will teach her the meaning of justice.

* * *

The girl's attorney rises from the table and approaches the witness stand with a smile. The girl smiles back, and it does wonders for her appearance. She looks even younger, more innocent than before. Eric stirs uncomfortably in his seat, and Pam, at his side, raises her eyebrow. He ignores her. It would do no good to say what he is thinking, that this girl would be a danger to any vampire under any circumstances. She is far too attractive for her own good.

"Would you state your name for the benefit of the court?" says the lawyer.

The girl clears her throat, a tiny, uncertain sound that perhaps only the vampires hear. "Sookie Stackhouse."

"How old are you, Miss Stackhouse?"

"Twenty-five," says the girl.

Eric blinks in surprise. She is older than he thought.

"And how long have you known me, Miss Stackhouse?"

The girl smiles. "Just about all my life, Mr Lancaster."

The lawyer-Lancaster-turns a brief glance at the jury, then on the audience, inviting them to witness this display of hominess and candor.

"Before we get started, Miss Stackhouse, I just want to say that I'm going to have to ask you some personal questions, and I don't want you to get uncomfortable. The jury's going to have a good listen, but you just remember this is old Sid Matt talking to you, and there's no need to be nervous."

"Yes, sir."

Eric finds his opinion of the lawyer rising. He seemed, at first, to be a predictable Southern bumpkin, the sort who relies on his standing in the community and his avuncular charm to persuade where his powers of argument fail. But he has already made a skillful defense of his client before asking her a single question. The jury, and the audience, have been invited to see her as he sees her, a naive, bashful child too unsophisticated to discuss sex frankly before an audience. Even a vampire might be disarmed by such a manipulation. A vampire other than Eric, at least.

"You knew the deceased, the vampire Bill Compton, pretty well, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you kill him?"

The girl lifts her head and squares her shoulders. "I did not."

"Good." The lawyer smiles. "How well did you know Mr Compton?"

The girl flushes, and the faint stain of color along her cheeks and exposed breast heightens her attractiveness in a way Eric is not immune to.

"Well, he was my boyfriend," she says.

"I've known you an awful long time, Sookie, and if you'll forgive me bringing it up, I don't think I've ever known you to have a boyfriend before Mr Compton. Am I right?"

"That's right," she says, and her blush deepends.

Eric's fangs extend, but he keeps his mouth shut, hiding them. He finds himself resenting, suddenly, that Bill Compton found her first. What a treat she must have been for him. On the other hand, if he had taken up with her, perhaps she would have tried to kill him. What an adventure that would have been for all involved.

"You were real fond of him, weren't you?"

"I was," she says, in a clear, steady voice. "I loved him."

"When you say you loved him, are you using the past tense because he is deceased, or because you ceased to love him before he met his 'final death'?"

Eric's nostrils flare. He catches Pam rolling her eyes. They both heard the scare quotes around the lawyer's last words. He is communicating to the human jury that the vampire she murdered was technically dead already. Eric is sure the ploy will be effective.

"We had already broken up before he died," she says softly.

"Did y'all have a fight?"

"I found out he'd been keeping secrets from me."

"What sort of secrets, honey?" There's a faint note of suspense in the lawyer's voice, an implication of some dark, horrifying vampire intrigue that will no doubt send the imaginations of the human jurors into overdrive.

"I was at his house one day, and I found this-file." The girl lifts her chin and looks at the jury. "It was full of information about me. My family tree, newspaper clippings about me and my relatives."

"Why on earth would he have such a file in his possession?"

"I don't know," says the girl. "He wouldn't tell me. But I realized that when we first met, he must have known all about me, even though he pretended he didn't even know my name. After that, I didn't feel I could trust him, so I told him I didn't want to see him anymore."

Eric sits very still for a moment, then slowly turns his head to locate the Queen, seated between two members of her retinue in a front row of the galley. She's watching the girl with an imperturbable expression. Eric frowns. Pam glances over at him, and he shakes his head slightly. A flicker of anger stirs inside him. He knew nothing of this file, and he ought to have known. He detects the Queen's intrigues in the situation. He will have to investigate the matter at a later time.

"How did you first meet Mr Compton?"

"He came into Merlotte's one night."

"Merlotte's Bar and Grill, your place of employment?"

"Yes, sir."

"He was one of your customers?"

"Yes, he sat down at a table in my section."

"And what did you think when you saw him?"

The girl's smile is at once tense, and rather sad. Eric finds himself responding to her forlorn expression against his will. She has been very well coached, or she is an excellent actress.

"I was real excited," she says. "I'd wanted to meet a vampire ever since they first came out of the coffin. I mean-" she blushes, and again Eric can't help noticing the heightened color against her fair skin is very attractive, "ever since the Great Revelation."

"So when Mr Compton seated himself in your section-"

"Objection." Timothy Baker, vampire prosecutor, stands. "You are implying that Mr Compton sought her out, and that is not proven."

"I'll rephrase," said Lancaster, before the judge could speak. "Was Mr Compton seated in your section by a hostess, or did he seat himself?"

"He seated himself," says the girl-Sookie, Eric reminds himself. "I saw him come in and sit down."

Lancaster shoots a look at Baker over his shoulder, who simply nods. Eric glares irritably at the back of the vampire's head. It was a pointless objection, and only adds brush strokes to the picture Lancaster is panting for the jury.

Lancaster arches an eyebrow, and turns back to his witness.

"You approached Mr Compton in the normal course of your work, as he was a customer seated in your section of the restaurant. Did you engage him in conversation?"

"A little bit," says Sookie. "He asked for a True Blood, and I told him he we didn't have any because he was the first vampire to come into the bar. He asked if it was obvious that he was a vampire, and I told him I knew right away."

There's a stirring in the galley. Eric knows, if the lawyer does not, that this was a revelation the girl should never have been allowed to make. How did she know? This is now the question in the mind of every vampire present, including Eric. But the lawyer does not flinch.

"What happened then?"

"He ordered a glass of red wine, just so he'd have a reason to stay, I think. The next time I saw him, he was with the Rattrays."

"That would be Mack and Denise Rattray."

"Yes, sir."

"And what was the nature of his interaction with them?"

"I couldn't really say." The girl looks uncomfortable. "They seemed real friendly, at first."

"At first? What changed?"

"I don't know for sure." The girl's eyes widen. "There was something about the way they were looking at him. Kind of-predatory, I guess."

"Mr Compton left the bar with the Rattrays not long after meeting them, is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"When did you see him next?"

"A few minutes later. I went out into the parking lot after I realized they'd left together."

"Why did you do that?"

Again, the girl looks uncomfortable. Eric begins to revise his opinion of her acting skills.

"Mack and Denise had a bad reputation," she says. "I'd heard things about them-rumors and things."

"What sort of rumors, Sookie?"

"That they were drainers."

Another reaction from the audience. Eric is unable to restrain his own blink of surprise.

"Did you know that?" Pam whispers to him, in a voice too low for the surrounding humans to hear.

Eric shakes his head imperceptibly. His anger deepens. When the Queen and the AVL stole the investigation from him, he'd been assured the only reason was because the matter was so simple as to be beneath him, an open and shut case that even the human authorities could be relied on to prosecute competently. It would be inaccurate to say that he had trusted those assurances. But he had been certain that he knew all there was to know. Now he is coming to suspect that the matter is much deeper than he first suspected.

"By drainers," says the lawyer, in a dramatic, portentous voice, "you mean humans who subdue vampires and drain them of their blood in order to sell it illegally?"

This, again, is for the benefit of the human jurors. The vampires in the jury box all have their fangs out, signifying to all observing that they know very well what a drainer is.

"Yes, sir," says the girl. Her confidence is increasing, and a glint of righteous indignation lights in her eyes. "And since I knew Bill was new to Bon Temps, I figured he wouldn't have heard about that, so I felt like I ought to run outside and check up on him, maybe try to warn him if I could get him away from the Rattrays for a moment."

Why? Eric finds himself wondering. What would she care for the fate of a vampire who was unknown to her? He dismisses the question with a surge of irritation. He isn't here to see things from the girl's point of view.

"Did you have the opportunity to warn Mr Compton?" asks the lawyer.

"No, sir. By the time I caught up to them, the Rattrays were already draining him."

The stir in the courtroom is so prolonged that the judge, a silver haired human male stamped in the exact same mold as the girl's attorney, calls for order.

"How were they able to incapacitate Mr Compton long enough to drain him?" asks the lawyer, in a fascinated voice. He is manipulating the theater of the courtroom with great skill, and Eric finds himself admiring the man's technique.

"They'd wrapped a long silver chain over his wrists and neck and ankles," says the girl. "They'd already drained five or six vials of his blood by the time I found them."

"And what did you do when you saw Mr Compton in such distress?" Lancaster sounds enthralled, as though this were the first time he'd heard the story, and Eric cannot help but notice that the jury, including the three vampires, also appears to be on the edge of their seats.

"I yelled at them to leave him alone. Mack came at me with a knife, so I grabbed a chain out of the back of my brother's truck and slung it around Mack's neck. He dropped the knife, so I picked it up and told Denise to back away."

"And did she?"

"They both did. They were plenty mad, though. They got in their truck and tried to run us over, but I dragged Bill into the trees and got the silver off him."

"Well, I declare." Lancaster turns his back on the girl and walks out toward the audience. "You were alone, and you pitted yourself against two people you knew to be armed and dangerous, in order to save this vampire whom you'd only just met, and then when you were alone with him you freed him from his restraints. Weren't you scared? Didn't you think that he might turn on you?"

Against his will, Eric finds himself picturing the scene: this frail human girl, alone in the night, shouting defiance at her enemies, turning their weapons against them, driving them off, then ministering fearlessly to their vampire victim. The vision is-compelling. He jerks his head to one side, trying to clear his mind.

_Something isn't right_, he thinks to himself. This girl, this case-they aren't in the least what he'd expected. He'd thought the girl was Bill Compton's discarded pet, murdering him in his sleep in order to avenge her pride, bolstered perhaps by some anti-vampire rhetoric she'd picked up on a TV talk show. He cannot reconcile the girl before him now with the image he'd formed of her. She _is_ proud, that is true-but he suspects that she is too proud for such pettiness.

"What is it?" whispers Pam. She has picked up on his agitation.

"Later," he murmurs.

"It did cross my mind that he might hurt me," says the girl. She doesn't look at all uncomfortable now. Her tone is pert, self-assured. "But I wrapped the silver chain around my neck, just in case. Besides that, I figured he was capable of realizing I'd done him a good turn."

She'd treated Bill Compton courteously, Eric thinks, but she had taken precautions. She is smarter-and more highly evolved-than he'd given her credit for.

"And did he?" says the lawyer. "Was he grateful?"

"He thanked me," says the girl. "He offered me the blood they'd drained, to sell or drink if I wanted."

The stir created by this news is unrestrainable, even after the judge bangs his gavel. Every vampire in the courtroom is hissing. The humans look dismayed; they do not realize the implications of the girl's statement. Eric looks again toward the Queen; her features are arranged in a delicate sneer.

Lancaster pitches his voice over the clamor. "And did you take the blood he offered?"

"I did not," says the girl. "I told him I didn't have any use for it."

"Even though you could sell it for a great deal of money? Forgive me mentioning it, Sookie, but I know you could use it."

"I would never do that," says the girl.

Eric stares at her. Pam is staring at her too. Eric feels a sudden surge of warmth in his chest that has nothing to do with anger or annoyance.

"Miss Stackhouse." The noise around them begins to die away, and Lancaster pitches his voice low. "Were you aware at the time that when Mr Compton invited you to drink his blood, doing so would have created what is known as a blood bond between the two of you? And that this blood bond would enable Mr Compton to sense your emotions, and track your location, as well as-excuse me-create a sexual attraction between you?"

"How did he know that?" hisses Pam.

Eric shrugs. Bill Compton had been shrewd. He must have realized the girl's potential from that first meeting. Eric might have done the same under the circumstances. Why, though, had he not simply glamored her? He files this question away to be examined later, with the rest of the inconsistencies he has discovered in the course of the girl's testimony.

The girl tilts her chin up. "I wasn't aware at that time, no."

"But you became aware of the effects of blood bonding later, did you not?"

"I did."

"How did you find out?"

"Bill told me."

"Under what circumstances?"

The girl squares her shoulders. "The night after I saved Bill from the Rattrays, they attacked me in the parking lot as I was getting off work. They beat me nearly to death. Bill found me and gave me his blood so I would heal."

Eric blinks. Again, he finds himself picturing the scene. The thought of the girl, covered in her own blood, is at once arousing and-more distasteful than it ought to be.

"He found you," says the lawyer. "How did he do that?"

"When he came into the bar that evening, I asked him to meet me after work. My grandmother wanted me to ask him if he'd give a talk at a meeting of the Descendants of the Glorious Dead."

"You had an appointment to meet him."

"Yes, sir."

"But he was late."

"He was a little late, yes."

"Didn't that strike you as strange?"

Sookie blinks. She looks surprised, uncertain, like she doesn't know where the question is leading. But Eric does, and even as he finds himself impressed with the lawyer's sagacity, he feels a sudden flare of outrage that might have taken his breath away, if he had any breath.

"Not really, no."

"Sookie, did it ever cross your mind that Mr Compton wasn't late at all? That he was nearby when the attack on you began, and that he allowed it to proceed so that he would have an excuse to feed you his blood, and so create the blood bond that you denied him when you refused to take the blood he'd offered you the night before?"

And that, Eric thinks, is that. The trial is effectively over. He doubts neither the truth of the lawyer's implications, nor the effect that the disclosure will have on the jury. He imagines that Nan Flannigan and the other functionaries at the AVL are regretting right about now that they pushed this ridiculous spectacle into taking place over Eric's objections. Lancaster has done his job very effectively. He has painted a picture of a brave, selfless, fragile girl exerting herself to heroism on the behalf of a vampire who stood by and allowed her to be tortured for the service she'd done him, all so that he could ensnare her with his dark powers. And Lancaster hadn't prepared her for the question; the entire courtroom will reel with the shock of the girl's realization. She could confess to the murder right now, and walk away a free woman.

This pretty human child and her sweet human tears are about to set the mainstream movement back a thousand years, and Eric can't even bring himself to resent her for it.

Except-the girl isn't crying. Her eyes have widened in shock, but she doesn't look upset. She looks-Eric narrows his eyes consideringly-_angry_.

"No, Mr Lancaster," she says, in a calm clear voice. "It never crossed my mind. And I don't believe it now. Bill deceived me and manipulated me, it's true. But he wasn't a monster. He was a decent man, at heart. He would never have let them hurt me like you said."

The courtroom around Eric explodes. The judge bangs his gavel. Lancaster looks shocked, the prosecutor lost, the jury perplexed.

Eric has risen to his feet before he knows what he is doing. Despite the furor, the movement attacts the girl's attention. She looks up, and Eric meets her eyes across the distance. She holds his gaze steadily, then glances demurely down at her hands.

"Pam," says Eric, his voice too low for anyone else to hear over the noise of the courtroom.

Pam looks at him and rises. Wordlessly, they slip out the back of the courtroom together.


	2. Judgment

"What's going on, Eric?" Pam demands of him when they reach the hallway. "You're upset."

"No shit, Pam," he says. They are speaking too low for any of the nearby humans to overhear, but Eric is aware that his body language is all too expressive. He straightens, adjusting the jacket of his grey suit. "Someone is playing me."

"Ooh, you used slang," says Pam. "Did it hurt?"

Eric gives her a quelling look. She rolls her eyes, but desists.

"Return to Shreveport," he says. "Retrieve the duplicates you made of the casefile before the AVL showed up and bring them here. And make arrangements for my accommodation in Bon Temps, I'm going to be here a few days."

Pam turns automatically to do his bidding, but because she's Pam she stops and looks back at him over her shoulder.

"What?" he says.

"Is it worth the trouble?" she says. "Interfering, when they've already got so much invested in this dog and pony show?"

Eric turns away. "There will be no trouble," he says. "In any case, I have a duty."

"I think trouble's a little like that old saying about the devil," she says. "You don't have to believe in it if it believes in you."

He doesn't look at her. A moment later her hears the clack of her heels as she walks away.

Through the window of the courtroom door, he sees Sid Matt Lancaster return to his seat, and Baker, the prosecutor, step forward to begin the cross-examination. He catches a glimpse of the girl's face through the narrow view afforded by the slit window. She looks frightened, wary, but determined. It is not the look of a guilty person, but of an innocent one determined to tell the truth no matter what it will cost her.

The implication of the thought strikes him full force a moment later. _She is innocent_, Eric thinks. _I know this_. He does not question how he knows it. But he thinks it must have been the girl's final outburst that convinced him. Either she had been too stupid to realize that her lawyer was essentially insuring her acquittal, or she simply had too much integrity to lend herself to a false implication.

And Eric feels quite sure she isn't stupid.

So what does it matter to him if the girl is innocent? Nothing at all, except for the fact that the identity of the true murderer is still unknown. And now Eric is the only person, vampire or human, looking for him.

* * *

Eric returns to the courtroom. He has no sooner taken his seat again than he can tell the cross-examination is not going well for the girl. She still has that determinedly brave upward tilt to her chin, but her mouth is tight, her eyes worried. Eric glances at Baker, who stands motionless at an angle that slights the girl and encompasses the jury.

"Ms. Stackhouse," he is saying. "From what you have revealed under Mr. Lancaster's questioning, am I to infer that at the time you began your relationship with Bill Compton, you were a virgin?"

Eric blinks. This was...not what he had expected.

"Objection." Sid Matt Lancaster stands. "Your Honor, Miss Stackhouse is a lady, and unaccustomed to prurient busybodies making a spectacle of her private concerns."

"It goes to motive, your Honor." Baker does not look at Lancaster.

"Get to the point quickly, Mr Baker," says the judge.

Baker turns to the witness stand. "Ms. Stackhouse?"

"I was," she says softly. Eric expects her to blush or look away, but she looks so steadily at Baker that after a moment or so he is forced to make eye contact with her. He looks away again almost immediately, as though she has made him uncomfortable.

"You are twenty-five years old, Ms. Stackhouse," says Baker. "I understand that you were raised along strict religious principles, but under those circumstances the normal, ah, conclusion to your condition would be marriage. Why did Mr Compton, with whom you were involved for only a matter of weeks, rate as the exception to a life-long practice of celibacy?"

"I fell in love with him," she says, in the same clear, steady voice. "I had never been in love with anyone before."

"You were in love with Mr Compton." Baker sneaks a quick glance behind him at jury, long enough to make eye contact with the vampires there. His lips turn up at the corners. "What qualities did Mr Compton possess to earn him so signal an honor?"

Eric's nostrils flare. There is an undertone of mockery to Baker's questions that he finds-distasteful.

The girl frowns. "He was-kind," she says. "He respected my grandmother. He was courteous and chivalrous to me. He was interested in what I had to say. He knew so much about life and the world. When I first met him, it was like meeting a favorite character out of the pages of a storybook." She hesitates, and then, with an expression of determined honesty, added, "And he wanted me. No one ever had before. I enjoyed that."

Eric's eyes widen fractionally, then close. How mortifyingly naive the girl is. She honestly believes that no one wanted her before Bill Compton? She is more of a child than he'd realized.

"Like a character from a storybook." Baker repeats her words with an air of amusement. "He was chivalrous, you say. Quite like he was from another era entirely, would you say?"

"Yes," she says. "I suppose he was."

"You said earlier that you knew Mr Compton was a vampire the moment you saw him."

"I did."

"Did anyone else in the restaurant make the same deduction with the same rapidity?"

"I don't know."

"How long had you known Mr Compton before you consummated your, ah, romance?"

"About a week, I suppose," Sookie says.

"A week." Baker arches an eyebrow. "Twenty-five years of chastity, and in a week you overthrew all your convictions for the sake of a vampire."

Lancaster stands. "Your Honor-"

"I am about to make my point." Baker turns his back on the girl and faces the jury. "Ms. Stackhouse, are you familiar with the term 'fangbanger'?"

"Your Honor!"

Eric bristles in his chair. He glances toward the Queen, and finds her smiling, amused. The humans around him are muttering to themselves, exuding disapproval like a foul odor. The vampires on the jury look as though they've experienced a revelation, and the human jurors have set, knowing expressions, like they've just connected the dots.

"How is this relevant, Mr Baker?" asks the judge.

"If Ms Stackhouse will answer the question, I will make my point."

"Ms Stackhouse?" says the judge.

Sookie squares her shoulder. "It's a name for people who want to be used by vampires for sex, and...other things."

_Other things_, thinks Eric, in disbelief. If this child came to Fangtasia, she wouldn't even know what she was seeing. She has nothing in common with the desperate, lonely people who vie for the attention of the vampires in his club. Anyone who could look at her and think otherwise is blind.

"You told us a few minutes ago that when you saw Mr Compton you were delighted, because you had always wanted to meet a vampire."

"Yes," says the girl, frowning.

"It really wouldn't have mattered who the vampire was, would it?" Baker gives the jury a knowing smirk. "Any vampire would do."

"I wouldn't say that," says the girl, dismayed.

"Really?" Baker wheels on her. "You no sooner met your first vampire than you slept with him. Why surrender your virginity to him so quickly, if not because you were simply waiting for the first vampire you met?"

Eric's fist clenches. Two of the human jurors shake their heads, looking disgusted. He takes in the expressions of the other humans around him, and a chilling realization settles over him. _This will work_. Baker is playing skillfully, not only on their anti-vampire bias, but on their misogyny and Puritanism. Once the girl is estalished as a vampire-fucking whore in the minds of the jury, there is little they will not believe her capable of.

"It wasn't like that," says the girl, falteringly. Eric realizes that she too is sensible of the changing tenor of the jury's thought. She is no fool; she has lived among these people all her life, and she must know the darkness in their hearts.

"Wasn't it?" says Baker, his tone scornful. "From what you've told us about your first meeting with Mr Compton, it sounds to me like you'd spent the last couple of years since the Great Revelation building up an image in your mind of what a vampire would be like. Something from out of a storybook, didn't you say? An old-fashioned gentleman out of a forgotten era. Mr Compton was like something from out of a fantasy, wasn't he?"

"He-" She shakes her head. "That's not why I fell in love with him."

"Were you really in love with him at all? Or had you simply found a vampire at long last, a mysterious, old-fashioned, wealthy vampire who fulfilfed all your fantasies? You'd obviously come to the conclusion that none of the human men in your life were good enough for you, but a vampire! Well, that was another thing entirely."

A growl rises in Eric's throat. Every man on the jury who had ever seen the girl and lusted after her to no avail will be taken in by Baker's words. She doesn't stand a chance.

"I did love him," cries the girl. "Because of who he was, not because he was a vampire!"

Baker rounds on her, his voice rising in fury. "You broke up with him just a couple of weeks after you slept with him! Does that sound like love to you? Doesn't it sound more like you turned your back on him as soon as he proved he was a real, complex person, instead of a fantasy figure? And didn't that make you angry? Didn't you decide that you needed to find a new vampire, one that lived up to your expectations? Didn't you know that no other vampire would touch you as long as you were known to be associating with Bill Compton? Isn't that why you killed him, so you'd be free to pursue a vampire more to your liking?"

"No!" the girl shouted, as the courtroom erupts into murmurs and whispers. She is crying now-not from grief, Eric thinks, but from frustration. "No, I didn't kill him!"

"No more questions, your Honor." Baker returns to his table. Smugness radiates from him. The girl stares after him, looking lost, bewildered, furious. Something in the set of her shoulders tells Eric that she would like to settle the argument with fists, instead of words. He realizes, somewhat to his surprise, that he would like to give her that chance.

"Re-direct, your Honor." Lancaster rises, striding toward the witness stand. "Sookie. Look at me, darlin'. That's right. Now tell me, how many other vampires besides Mr Compton have you met?"

"Just a couple," says the girl, struggling for control of her voice.

"When you discovered Mr Compton's deception, and ended your relationship with him, did you seek those vampires out?"

"No, I never saw them again."

"In all the time you were with Mr Compton, did you ever ask him to introduce you to other vampires of his acquaintance?"

"I did not," says the girl. _And Compton would have been a fool to accede to any such request_, Eric thinks.

"Did you know that just a half hour's drive from here, in Shreveport, there's a well known vampire bar where humans often go in order to attract the attention of vampires?"

"I knew about it."

Eric blinks in surprise. What does she know of Fangtasia? Of him?

"Did you ever ask Mr Compton to take you there, or visit it on your own?"

"I did not."

_If only you had_, Eric thinks. If only he had known the girl before this. Much would be different.

"No further questions." Lancaster returns to his table and sits.

"You're excused, Miss Stackhouse," says the judge.

The girl rises unsteadily from her seat. She smooths her skirt automatically and picks her delicate way down the steps. Eric's eyes are riveted on her. She is shorter, smaller than he'd realized. She takes her seat at the defense table beside Lancaster, who pats her shoulder and ducks his head to whisper in her ear.

"Court is in recess until tomorrow evening," says the judge. "Officers, you will return the defendant to her cell."

"All rise," says the bailiff.

Eric waits until the judge has exited the room. He watches the uniformed men lead the girl away from the courtroom. His eyes linger on the back of her head until she disappears from sight.

He slips through the crowd to make his way toward the prosecutor's table.

"Baker," he says, low in the other vampire's ear.

Baker turns to him, and apprehension flashes in his eyes before his features resume their usual bland lack of expression. "Sheriff Northman," he says.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Eric says.

"Convicting a murderer," he says. "Why, do you think I should be doing something else?"

Eric bares his teeth. "The entire point of this absurd exercise was to foster harmony between humans and vampires. Your cross-examination today did nothing but appeal to the prejudice of the human jurors against those humans who willingly associate with our kind. How, might I ask, will this improve matters?"

Baker gives him a long, calculating look and adjusts his suit. He picks up his briefcase. "Sheriff," he says, "I've been a vampire for three years. But I've been a prosecutor for nearly fifteen. I am doing my job the only way I know how to do it."

"You have a higher duty now than to your conviction ratio." Eric instills the statement with all the threat he can muster.

"I see no conflict between my duty as a vampire and my duty to the court and the state of Louisiana," says Baker, in a voice pitched to resonate in a reporter's microphone. "You know perfectly well what our odds of conviction are in this case. I will say and do whatever I have to within the bounds of the law to overcome those odds."

Baker slips past him. There are reporters waiting for him on the courthouse steps. Eric remains where he is, then crosses the room to the defense table, where Sid Matt Lancaster sits alone, gathering his papers into his briefcase.

Lancaster looks up, startled, as Eric comes to stand before him.

"My name is Eric Northman," he says. "I want to see your client."


	3. Interview

In the end, he has to glamor Lancaster before he agrees to arrange a meeting with the girl. Eric had expected this, and all in all it is just as well that the man is reluctant to provide vampires with access to his client.

She has a cell to herself in the tiny Bon Temps jailhouse, and out of deference to her status as guilty till proven innocent, she's been allowed to make the room over into something homier than she must have found it at first. The bed is made up with a quilt and some fluffy pillows. There's a calender taped to the wall, and several stacks of library books in neat piles on the floor.

She's standing with her hands folded in front of her when Eric rounds the corner in the company of the guard. She must have received some advance warning of his visit, because she doesn't look surprised, or wary. She's smiling politely, as though welcoming him into her home. He finds himself wondering what her home looks like. In her bearing there is a curious mixture of dignity and humility, an air of pride and confidence that jars with her obvious lack of wealth or advantage. He finds himself conjuring an image of a gracious home in disrepair, haunted by history and memory, of the girl serving biscuits and sweat tea around a scrubbed wooden table worn satin-smooth by generations of her forebears.

"This is Mr Northman, Sookie," says the guard. "Sid Matt sent him along. You need anything, just holler."

"Thank you, Andy," she says.

There's a scraping noise against the floor behind him. The guard has placed a chair outside the cell for him. The guard walks off, and Eric watches him go before turning back to the girl.

"My name is Eric Northman," he tells her.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Northman. I'm Sookie Stackhouse. Please have a seat."

She perches on the edge of the bed and crosses her ankles. Eric lowers himself slowly into the chair, adjusting the jacket of his suit. He's glad he wore it, suddenly. Pam says the light grey color brings out his eyes.

"You're a vampire," says the girl after they've looked at each other for a moment.

"How do you know that?" says Eric.

"I can just tell," she says. "Vampires-glow, a little bit. Like an old nightlight with a rundown battery."

Eric laughs. "You can see that? That's extraordinary."

"It is? I don't understand why everyone doesn't see it."

"I'm sure you don't," says Eric. "Miss Stackhouse, I am the Sheriff of Area Five. Do you know what that means?"

"No," she says, "I'm afraid not."

"It means that under normal circumstances-if the American Vampire League had not interfered-I would be responsible for investigating Bill Compton's death."

"Oh," says the girl. Her eyes widen. "You're like a vampire detective."

"Essentially." Eric smiles, and is rewarded with the girl's blush. His smile widens.

"Did you come here to try and glamor me into making a confession?" she says.

Eric arches an eyebrow. "That's an idea."

"It won't work. I can't be glamored."

The other eyebrow flies up to join its mate. "Really. You know this for a fact?"

"Bill tried."

"I'll bet he did." Eric surveys the girl for a long moment, then smiles again. "It doesn't matter. I don't want your confession. I know you didn't kill Bill Compton."

"I didn't, as a matter of fact," says Sookie. "But why are you so sure?"

"I am over a thousand years old, Miss Stackhouse." He watches her eyes widen with satisfaction. "You will rarely find a better judge of human nature than a vampire, especially an old one."

"Then what in the world am I doing here?"

"You're a scapegoat," he tells her. "Most vampires don't care whether you're guilty or not. This trial is nothing more than a public relations stunt for the benefit of the AVL."

"Not just them," says the girl, in a calm voice that surprises him. "I'm surrounded by vultures."

"That you are." Eric smiles. "I'm here to see if I can help."

"Why?" Sookie's expression is unimpressed. Eric finds this irritating, but he can't help respecting her for it.

"Because the real murderer is still at large, and as Sheriff of the area in which Bill Compton resided, I am duty bound to find him."

"What makes you think it's a man?"

"Experience," says Eric. "Why? Do you know who did it?"

"No." She says the word without hesitation, but there's an undercurrent to her tone that Eric picks up on immediately.

"You're sure about that?"

Sookie blinks at him. Her mouth twists. She stares at him for a long moment, then seems to come to a decision.

"Do vampires ever-ever commit suicide?"

It is Eric's turn to blink. "Such a thing is-rare. But not unheard of."

"He wrote me a letter, after I saw him the last time."

"Where is it?"

"Sid Matt has it. He's going to bring it up in the trial tomorrow."

"What does it say?"

"That if I couldn't forgive him and take him back, he was going to go away for good. At the time I didn't think anything of, but ever since then I've-wondered."

There are tears in the girl's eyes. If they were for herself, Eric would find them merely discomfiting, but as they are for her former lover, he recoils from the sight of them.

"Did you love him?" Eric asks her.

"I thought I did," says the girl.

"You sound uncertain."

"It all happened so fast," she says. "I think love-real love-is something you have to grow into, over time." Her face twists. "I don't guess I'll ever find out now."

"What do you mean?"

She gives him a look of frank and bitter amusement. "Just about every vampire in America thinks I'm guilty. What's to stop them coming after me as soon as the trial's over?"

Eric doesn't say what he's thinking, which is that he, and any other vampire, is perfectly capable of tearing the iron bars between them out of the wall and killing her now. Better to let her sleep peacefully while she still can. He makes a mental note to have a word with the human sheriff regarding the girl's security.

"I am glad that your devotion to Compton's memory is not absolute," he says.

"Why?" Sookie wipes at her eyes. "What difference does it make?"

"None, for the trial." He leans forward in his chair and looks into her eyes. "I was looking beyond that. When this is over, I want you to be mine."

He expects her to be shocked. He expects her to sit back in her chair and look at him with wide, fluttering eyes. He expects the delicious blush that spreads over her neck and breast.

He does not expect her to throw her head back and give a full-throated laugh that rings off the walls of the prison.

He frowns. "Did I say something amusing?" he inquires in a cold voice.

"I'm sorry," she says. She clears her throat and assumes a more sober expression. "That makes forty-seven."

"Forty-seven what?"

"Marriage proposals. And offers of protection from vampires. I figure they basically add up to the same thing. They come in the mail every day. I reckon there are lots of folks who want to marry anyone famous, no matter how they got that way."

Eric blinks at her, stunned. He feels, abruptly, ridiculous, and this makes him irritable. "I assure you, Miss Stackhouse, your notoriety holds no particular appeal for me."

The girl seems to realize, from the stiffness of his tone, that he has taken exception to being grouped with the other forty-six imbeciles pestering her for attention. "I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to offend you. This whole thing is just so surreal to me."

"I can imagine," says Eric, relaxing slightly. "If you have better offers-"

"It's not like I take the letters seriously," she says. "Um-why would you want to-? If you don't mind my asking."

"You caught my attention," he says, still feeling out of sorts. This interview isn't going at all the way he'd planned. He's never attempted to articulate his preference for a particular human before. "In the courtroom today, you were very brave. You sat there before a crowd of hostile fools and told the truth without regard to what it would cost you." He forces a blinding smile to his lips, an attempt to conceal the degree to which he is stunned by his own frankness. "And of course, you are extremely attractive. You smell delicious."

He is pleased to find that the girl looks no less stunned. "Well, thank you," she says. "You're not so bad yourself."

"Do you like the suit? Pam says it brings out my eyes."

"It's a nice suit," she agrees. "Um, who's Pam?"

Eric grins. "My progeny. And my partner in several of my businesses. You'd like her, she's very...droll."

"I'm sure I would," says the girl. "Well, I thank you for the honor of your proposal, Mr Northman, but I have to tell you, I don't think it's very likely that I'll live to take you up on it."

"I will see that you do," says Eric, in a serious voice that drops into the bantering tone of their conversation like a stone into water.

"You can't promise that," says the girl, a little wistfully. "Though it's nice of you to say so."

"I can promise it," he says. "I am very old, and very powerful. There are few who would deny me, and they can be got around. If you were mine, no other vampire would touch you, and no human would get the chance."

"You said you wanted to help me," says the girl. "Is this what you meant? You'll help me by staking a claim, so the other vampires back off?"

"I intend to uncover the truth about Bill Compton's murder," he says. "I will do that regardless of whether you choose to yield to me. It is my duty."

"I see. I'll keep that in mind."

"Please do. Perhaps it will give me an advantage over my forty-six rivals."

The girl smiles. Eric decides to end the interview before he says anything he will end up regretting. He stands; the girl rises with him.

"Take care of yourself, Miss Stackhouse," he says. "I will see you again soon."

"You'll let me know? If you find out anything about Bill."

"I will."

He runs from the building, faster than her human eyes can follow. He has matters to attend to, and there isn't a second to waste.


	4. Inquiry

"I got you the only light-tight room at the Motel 6," says Pam with a smirk, when she pulls up at the courthouse in the corvette an hour later. "It's all that was available in Bon Temps. Changed your mind yet?"

"It will be fine," says Eric, waiting for Pam to slide over so that he can take the wheel. She does so after a moment of pouting. "Call Chow and tell him to arrange for vampire security at the Bon Temps sheriff's office. I don't want anyone interfering with the girl before the trial is over."

Pam shoots him a sidelong look, then pulls out her cell phone to make the call. Eric drives them to the motel, keeping silent, his thoughts churning in his head.

_She's dead if I don't keep her alive,_ he thinks. _She'll see that soon enough, she isn't stupid. Then she will yield to me. Her hair is like sunlight reflected on snow. She should wear reds-rubies set in gold, brushed cottons that gleam like velvet. And velvet too, of course. I will give her luxuries she has not dreamed of. Though she may reject them-it would be better if she did not feel indebted. She is very proud-she is one to be earned, not bought. No matter; I will win her in the end._

He arrives at the motel too soon, long before he has managed to settle his troubled thoughts. The place is a shithole, just as he expected, but he's slept in worse locations. At least there are no lice. Well, probably no lice.

Pam hands him the keycard and follows him up to the room. Once inside, with the door locked, she pulls out the files she brought him from Shreveport. Eric perches on the side of the bed and sifts through them, while Pam flicks the remote control, changing the TV channel until she comes to the day's coverage of the trial.

"Well, Pam," says Eric, setting the file aside a moment later. "Why do people kill people?"

Pam rolls her eyes without looking at him. "We're vampires, so I'll take that as a rhetorical question."

"More importantly," he says, "why would anyone bother to kill Bill Compton? He was nothing."

"You're sure it wasn't the girl?" Pam does look away from the television this time, her brow stamped with a frown.

"Positive," he says.

"You don't think she's capable of killing?" Pam's tone indicates polite disbelief.

"She's more than capable," says Eric. "But she wouldn't do it unless she felt she was justified, and she wouldn't hide it. Her self-preservation instincts are-less than desired."

Pam shuts the TV off and turns to look at him. "Desired by whom?" she says.

Eric frowns at the wall and doesn't answer.

"Eric." Pam stands up and comes to stand in front of him. "Is this about the_ girl_? Tell me it isn't about the girl."

"It's about a vampire being murdered in my area," he tells her. "It's about the AVL and the Queen going over my head to the press and forcing this degrading mockery of a trial into existence."

"You think they set the girl up?" she says. "Why?"

"Because she was convenient," says Eric. "The Vampire Rights Amendment is expected to open for debate in the Senate soon. The VLA has been waiting for an opportunity to make a show of good faith. They seized the chance."

"If that's true, it will hardly matter if you catch the real murderer tomorrow. If it's a vampire, the Queen won't let you make it public."

"The trial is a separate matter," he says. "If I find the murderer, I can find a way to exculpate the girl without bringing vampire involvement to light."

"Oh my God." Pam touches a hand delicately to her forehead. "This _is_ about the girl."

"I want her," says Eric simply. "There's no point in being a vampire if I can't get the things I want."

"It's because she's blonde, isn't it?" Pam shakes her own hair out pointedly. "I can find you a blonde, Eric. Lots of blondes."

"Who did Bill Compton associate with?" says Eric, ignoring this. "What resources did he command?"

"He was a procurer for the Queen for a few decades," says Pam. "Before that, he was mostly in the company of his maker, Lorena. He owned a few businesses-a restaurant, a clothing store. Small change, by vampire standards."

"Did he have other human companions?"

"No pets lately, apart from the Stackhouse girl. I saw him not too long ago, and he told me he was mainstreaming. I suppose he felt the need to be monogamous." She pronounces the word with a sneer.

"Did he have a will?"

Pam picks up the file on the bed and turns a few pages. "He did. Sookie is the beneficiary."

Eric shuts his eyes and sighs tiredly. "Not good," he says.

"It's like he was asking to get himself killed," says Pam. "He goes to live in a human neighborhood, brings a girl into his house, probably shows her where he sleeps, then makes a will leaving everything to her."

"I don't think she knew about the will," says Eric.

"It won't matter. Once it comes up in court, she's toast."

"She thinks he met the sun."

Pam's eyes widened. "She told you that? When?"

"I spoke with her after the trial." He doesn't look at Pam when he tells her this, but he can feel the look she's aiming at the back of his head. "She didn't say he met the sun, just that he wrote her an ambiguous letter. Her lawyer is supposed to introduce the letter into evidence tomorrow."

"The vampires on the jury won't buy that. A vampire, ending his existence because a human rejected him?"

Eric doesn't respond. It seems equally unlikely to him.

Pam perches on the bed beside him. Her face is screwed up in concentration. Eric feels a sudden rush of fondness for her; he knows what she thinks of his preoccupation with this case, with this girl, but for his sake she is bringing all her considerable mental faculties to bear on it. He is fortunate in his progeny.

As though she has traced the line of his own thoughts, she looks up at him and says, "Do you know anything about his maker?"

"Lorena." He turns the name over in his mouth. "Only by reputation. She is known to be...difficult. Unusually possessive."

"Strange, then, that she hasn't shown up at the trial."

Eric looks up. He stares at Pam, who arches an eyebrow. He snakes out a hand, catches her by the back of the head, and kisses her long and hard.

"Go," he says hoarsely, releasing her. "Find her. Find out everything you can about her."

Pam smirks. She rises, and runs at top speed from the room.

* * *

Eric conducts one last interview before retiring for the evening. Sid Matt Lancaster receives his call at 6 am with rather more grace than Eric expected.

"I'm not sure how much I should say to you," the lawyer tells him. "I do not pretend to comprehend all the complexities of your world, sir, but I am aware that as a vampire you are answerable to the persons responsible for placing my client in her present position."

"Your reticence does you credit," says Eric smoothly. He can feel the approaching dawn tug heavily at his eyelids, and he forces himself to concentrate. "Please accept my assurances that I would not willingly see any harm come to Miss Stackhouse. I am convinced of her innocence, and I wish to see the true murderer caught. If there has been a murder at all, that is. Miss Stackhouse gave me to understand that she has some doubts on that score."

"Yes, well." The lawyer sounds less than pleased that Eric knows this.

"My people are conducting an independent line of inquiry as we speak. I have great hopes that their efforts will soon yield useful information. It would be helpful in the mean time if you would share the contents of the letter that Mr Compton wrote to Miss Stackhouse shortly before his disappearance."

There is a long silence on the other end of the line, and if not for the fact that Eric can hear the creaking of the elderly human's heartbeat, he would think he'd hung up on him.

"I am going to take you at your word, young man," says the lawyer-forgetting, as humans his age do, how inappropriate the epithet is. "God save me from regretting it."

Eric waits. He hears the crackle of paper, and the lawyer clears his throat, then begins to read.

"My dear Sookie, I realize that this letter may be unwelcome to you, but I thank you for reading it anyway. I cannot think of any words to say to you apart from those I have said already, but I must say them again: I love you more than my own life, and I am grieved to my very soul by the knowledge that I have lost your trust. I know that I have only myself to blame, and that I have no defense to offer, nor any other plea to make, than that you forgive me, and give me the chance to prove myself to you once more. I do not wish to place you in an awkward position, and I will not force my company upon you. If you can find it in your heart to give me another chance, reply to this letter. If I do not hear from you by the end of the week, I will accept that my offenses are irredeemable, and make such amends as I can by removing myself entirely. All the love in my heart, William Compton."

Eric is silent for a long moment after, digesting what he has heard. "Not definitive," he says at last. "But certainly suggestive."

"Yes, I thought so. And whatever else, it certainly proves that he loved her, and held himself to blame for their separation."

"Indeed." Eric thanks the lawyer and hangs up the phone.

With minutes to spare before the dawn, he secures the entrance to the room and lowers himself into the cheap pressboard coffin provided by the motel.

His last thought, before the daylight takes him, is that if only Bill Compton were alive, he would dearly love to tear him limb from limb.


	5. Theories

**Author's Note** Thanks for the reviews, guys. I'm really glad you're enjoying the story. And I'm really glad some of you are familiar with _Strong Poison_ by Dorothy L Sayers. Those of you who aren't, I can't recommend it highly enough. I just thought I'd mention that I've changed the category on this story from SVM to True Blood, because I'm relying more and more on show canon as the chapters progress-referencing things like the AVL, and the gutsplosion style death of staked vampires. Also, I think Eric's tone in this story, as well as Pam's, is more in keeping with the show. This won't have any effect on the story, though.

* * *

Eric does not attend the trial the next day. He seeds the audience with loyal vampires from his retinue, and receives their reports afterward. The news is not good. Compton's letter has been introduced into evidence, but the prosecution had seized on the ambiguity of its phrasing and placed one vampire after another on the stand to testify to the unlikelihood of any vampire surrendering his immortal existence for the sake of a human. The jury, Eric's observers tell him, found the combined weight of the testimonies compelling.

Eric spends the day reviewing the evidence and waiting for a call from Pam that never comes. Finally, he receives a text from her indicating that she has spent their time apart following a number of leads that have all panned out. Eric resists the temptation to vent his frustration by crushing the phone in his hand, and returns instead to the Bon Temps jailhouse. He finds Chow's security arrangements placed invisibly around the perimeter. It's small comfort. The greatest danger facing Sookie will not come from outside.

He glamors the human guard and the receptionist in order to pass them by without tiresome interference. He finds Sookie curled up on her bed, reading a book. She's changed out of her court clothes, into a tank top and a pair of pyjama bottoms. Her hair is wet. He finds the scene oddly arousing.

"Miss Stackhouse." She jumps, shrieks, and stumbles to her feet. Eric smiles. "I hope I find you well."

Sookie gathers up her dignity like the train of an evening dress, and gives him a short nod. "As well as I can be, thank you."

"You've had visitors." Eric glances at the flower arrangement in a plastic cup sitting on the desk against the wall.

Sookie follows his glance and smiles. "Some of my friends came by with food and books and flowers."

_Flowers,_ thinks Eric. _I should have thought of that_. She must be enduring any number of privations in this jail cell; he will spare a thought, later, for contemplating how he can ease them.

"You are a great reader," he observes, taking in the fresh piles of books beside her bed.

Sookie shrugs. "Not a lot else to do in here."

"I have a substantial library."

Sookie cocks an eyebrow. "You've certainly had the time to build one." She takes a step backwards and sits down on the bed. "Have you found out anything new about Bill?"

"My people are still making inquiries," Eric says. "You can assist them by answering a few questions."

"Fire away," says Sookie.

"How you are covering your legal expenses?"

Sookie blushes faintly, but she doesn't avert her eyes. "Sid Matt is an old friend of my grandmother's and he's letting me pay in installments," she says. "Plus, my boss is letting me borrow some money."

"Your employer? Sam Merlotte?" Eric hears his voice turn cold. It is news to him that there is a man in her life willing to support her financially. He makes a note to look into Merlotte later.

"He's a friend," says Sookie uncertainly, as though the revelation has embarrassed her.

"Your grandmother died recently. Did she have nothing to leave you?"

Sookie shakes her head. "Just the house and the land. Not that I'm not grateful, but between taxes and upkeep the only way I could make money off them is if I sold them."

Eric finds himself wondering why she hasn't done precisely that.

"What of Bill's estate?" he asks.

"Excuse me?" says Sookie.

The confusion in her expression, Eric thinks, is a good sign. "You're the beneficiary of his will."

"I am? I figured he would have changed that when we broke up."

Eric's relief evaporates. "You knew about the will."

"Bill mentioned it once," she says, carelessly. "I think he just didn't want his family's house to go to strangers. It's not like he was leaving me a fortune, anyway. That old house of his is just like mine, a sinkhole for money."

Eric watches her face carefully. "Bill owned several thriving businesses."

Sookie's eyes widen. "Seriously?"

"He never told you?"

"No." There's a bitter twist to her mouth. "There's a lot of things Bill didn't tell me."

"Perhaps it's just as well this hasn't come up in the trial."

"Because it's not enough for me to be a homicidal fangbanger, I've got to be a gold-digger too."

Eric shrugs. "It could be portrayed as a convincing motive."

Sookie rolls her eyes. "Even if I knew Bill had money, killing him would be a stupid way to try and get it. You're not allowed to profit by crime."

"A jury might have a difficult time believing that you knew that."

"Because barmaids aren't supposed to know anything about the law?" she says shrewdly.

Eric smiles. "Something like that."

"Even barmaids watch Law & Order."

Eric turns behind him and picks up the chair left from the night before. He places it close to the bars of the cell door and sits down, leaning back casually.

"If you were going to kill a vampire," he says, in a light tone, "how would you do it?"

Sookie frowns, and blinks, but she rises to the challenge. "Stake them while they were sleeping, I guess."

"What would you do with the remains?"

"What remains?"

"The remains of the vampire you'd staked."

"Um, I don't know, vacuum them up? Sweep them under a rug?"

Eric smiles. A knot of tension in his stomach begins to relax and uncoil. "You've never seen a vampire staked."

"Uh, no." Sookie laughs a little, like the question is ridiculous.

"We don't turn to ash, Miss Stackhouse, unless we meet the sun. Even then the process is not instantaneous."

"Golly." Sookie blinks. "Did Bill leave-remains?"

"Remains were found at the scene. They were supposed to be Bill's. His resting place was-heavily marked with your scent."

She doesn't look surprised. "I'd been down there a few times."

"It is rare for a vampire to place that degree of trust in a human." Although he thinks he can understand why Bill Compton had done so. Eric feels quite certain that if Sookie ever kills anyone, they will be awake, facing her, and possibly armed.

"So the vampires on the jury will assume the only reason his resting place would smell like me is because I went there to kill him."

"Yes."

"How would I have known where he slept if he hadn't invited me down there?"

Eric rolls his eyes, remembering the closet and the carpet over the trapdoor. "It was not-especially well concealed."

"So someone else could have been able to find him, right?"

"That is my assumption."

She tilts her head curiously. "Did it smell like anyone else had been there, besides me and Bill?"

"The official report says no."

"You think whoever found him lied about what they smelled?"

Eric nods. "It's possible." It is more than possible; it is almost certainly what happened, which means that the deception must involve the Queen, the AVL, or both. He doesn't like to dwell on the potential complications this represents.

"Could someone else go and take a sniff around?" _Like you?_ her expression seems to say.

He does not tell her that he has been there already in an attempt to do just that. "The scent is too old. Too many people have been in and out since the scene was discovered."

Sookie sits silently for a moment. Eric can almost see the rapid working of her thoughts. He wishes he could read them; the girl is complex, unpredictable for a human, in ways that leave him feeling uncharacteristically uncertain.

"Do you think there's a chance that Bill isn't really dead?" she says finally.

Eric's eyes widen involuntarily. He covers this by staring at her coolly for a second. "Why would you suggest that?"

"You said the remains were assumed to be his. Isn't there a way to tell for sure? Could they match his DNA?"

"DNA typing is unreliable for vampires." Not to mention the fact that many older vampires treat its existence as some kind of human fairy tale. The degree to which human scientific advancements has outstripped the magics of their kind makes most vampires deeply uncomfortable. Not Eric, though. He loves technology. He finds it all too easy to remember what the world was like without it.

"Well, crap," says Sookie, slumping.

"Don't look so despondent," says Eric, in a tone he hopes is consoling. He is out of practice at comforting humans. "I may have good news for you soon."

"What sort of good news?"

He briefly considers telling her about Pam's assignment, then changes his mind. It may yield nothing, and he doesn't want to place himself in the position of having to disappoint her.

"I can't say yet." He smiles, and deliberately changes subjects. "Have you given any further consideration to my offer?"

Sookie does not blush, or smile. She looks irritated. Eric fights the urge to scowl.

"It's crossed my mind a few times," she says. "But I have to tell you, Mr Northman, lately all I can think about is leaving the vampire world behind all together."

He forgets, from time to time, what a child she is. Does she truly believe she will ever be free of vampires again? "You may find that difficult."

"I reckon I'll find it a lot more difficult if I take up with you," she says pertly.

"Other vampires will not wait for you to choose them of your own free will."

"I'm pretty sure there are laws against that sort of thing."

Eric arches an eyebrow. "Human law has yet to catch up with the complexities of our world."

"I don't think it counts as free will if I agree to become yours just because I'm afraid of other vampires."

"We see things differently."

"I'll bet." Her voice is flat, unimpressed, dismissive.

Eric leans forward and favors her with a display of teeth. "I know you find me attractive."

Sookie shrugs. "Yeah, I've got eyes. So what?"

Stung, Eric sits back again. "I have a great deal to offer."

"That's what Bobby Delray from Lizard Lick, North Carolina, said in his letter." Sookie smiles. "He owns the Piggly Wiggly up there, apparently."

A growl rises in Eric's throat before he can restrain it. "You are mocking me."

Sookie's smile disappears. "You're mocking yourself," she says.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Sookie uncrosses her legs and sits up straight before speaking again.

"When I was Bill, I let him tell people I was 'his'," she makes finger-quotes around the word, "because I loved him, and because he said it was the only way to keep me safe from other vampires. But let me tell you, I didn't find it the least bit charming." She leans forward, her expression intent, like she's about to tell him a secret. "And _just_ because he's not here anymore, it doesn't mean I'm fair game for the next vampire who takes a shine to me."

"I'm afraid that in the eyes of other vampires, you are very much _fair game_, as you put it," he says, irritated. "You would be wise to keep this in mind before scorning me."

Sookie rolls her eyes. "God knows, I can't stop you or any other vampire from knocking me over the head and dragging me off by the hair to your vamp-cave, if you want to. But my self-respect's about the only thing I've got in this world, and I'm not about to sell that by taking up with a man just because I'm afraid of what will happen if I don't."

Eric blinks. He finds that he has to take a moment before he can form a response to this. "You value your honor over your life." It isn't a question.

Sookie flushes. "Yes, if you want to put it like that, I guess I do."

Eric watches her for so long that she begins to squirm under his gaze. "Remarkable," he says at last.

"Not really."

He does not contradict her. To her, he is sure it does not seem remarkable. She probably can't imagine any other way to be.

Part of him wants to walk away now, leave the girl to her prison cell and her trial and what remains of her short human life. Or else tear down the door between them and sink his fangs into her neck. He can't remember the last time he met a human's resistance with anything other than a brief, predictable spurt of violence. He can't remember the last time he wanted anything so much, only to be denied.

But what a victory it would be, he finds himself thinking, before he can act on either impulse, to conquer the resistance of such a creature-not by stealing her honor, but by winning honor for himself in her eyes.

Eric opens his mouth. Closes it again, then speaks.

"What must a man do-a vampire-to win your loyalty, Miss Stackhouse?"

Sookie looks at him blankly. Her shock mirrors his own.

"I don't know," she says, after a moment. "I guess his actions would have to speak for themselves."

"Indeed." Eric grins. Action, he understands. He and Sookie speak different languages; action is infinitely to be preferred. "In that case, I have much to do before dawn."

He leaves her with no further word of farewell. Let her be confused; let her be the one left wondering, for a change.


	6. Associations

Eric dials Pam's number as he drives the corvette out of the parking lot of the jailhouse.

"Pam," says Eric, as soon as she picks up the phone. "Tell you've learned something by now."

"I've learned lots of things, Eric," says Pam in a bored voice, and he smiles. She wouldn't dare take that tone with him unless she had good news to offer.

"Tell me."

"No one has seen or heard from Lorena in the last year," she says. "And no one who's seen her in the last decade wants to talk about her. But I did get one tantalizing little tip from a vampire named Bernard who needs a start up loan for a fang-friendly strip club he wants to start in Boise."

"Understood. What was the tip?"

"Lorena has another child. Her name's Judith Vardamom. She's in Arkansas." Pam gives him the address. "I can visit her if you like, but it will take me a couple of days to get there."

"I'll do it. Tell Bernard we'll discuss the loan if I get anything useful out of her." He hangs up.

Eric leaves for Arkansas the next evening at dusk and arrives two hours before dawn. Judith Vardamom's home is a modest brick dwelling in downtown Little Rock, and when she opens the door he is surprised to find her a modest looking vampire, small and round, with a pleasant, cheerful face. He wonders what Lorena had been thinking, choosing such a person for her child.

She gives him a cautious, courteous nod. "What can I do for you?" she says.

"I am Eric Northman, Sheriff of Area Five in Louisiana," he says. "I wish to speak to you about Bill Compton."

Judith freezes, a strangely human reaction for a vampire. Then she steps back from the door, to allow him passage inside.

"I've been following the trial on TV," she tells him, sinking down onto a plain upholstered sofa in the living room. "I wondered why no one came to see me before."

Eric can't think of a response to this that won't lay bare his conflict with Louisiana and the AVL, so he lets it pass.

"Is Bill Compton dead?" he asks her.

She blinks at him for a moment.

"Would I know for certain?" she says.

"I have known vampires who felt the death of their maker's other children," says Eric.

"I felt nothing," she says.

"Attempts are being made to trace Lorena," says Eric, keeping his relief to himself. He notes with interest that Judith tenses at the mention of Lorena's name. "I thought it-curious that she has not made an appearance at the trial."

"If Bill were dead, I am sure she would know," says Judith. "She's obsessed with him."

"That was my impression also."

"She would want revenge on the human girl."

"Would she bide her time until the trial was over?"

"I wouldn't think so. Lorena was never one for careful planning, or deferring pleasure." Judith hesitates. "Especially if he loved her. She would not forgive either of them for that."

Eric nods. "She and Bill were together for a long time after his making."

"Eighty years." Judith gives him a ghostly smile. "I was with her only five."

"Why the difference?"

"She had no true interest in me." There is a detectable trace of relief and gratitude in Judith's voice. "She made me because Bill took a fancy to me. I resemble his human wife. He was unhappy in her company. She hoped I would make him more content with his lot."

"Did you?"

"No." Her smile is more genuine this time. "We are-we were-fond of each other. But he felt guilty; he was afraid I blamed him for Lorena making me."

Eric studies her expression. He feels certain there is more to the story that she is not telling him. "Did you?"

"No. Lorena does exactly as she pleases. Even if he had known what she intended, no amount of pleading would have changed her mind."

"When he left Lorena, you did not meet again?"

Judith regards him for a long moment, and when she speaks again, she does not answer his question; at least not directly.

"Have you met the girl? His human?"

Eric tilts his head. "Yes?"

"She seems sweet. Rather naive."

Eric does not answer. He is not prepared to discuss Sookie's character with a vampire over whom he has no authority.

"Do you think he loved her?" Judith continues.

Eric shrugs. "I barely knew him."

"I knew him well."

"And?"

She speaks slowly, lingering over her choice of words. "Bill is unlike most vampires I have ever met. He works hard to preserve his remaining humanity."

"What's your point?"

"Bill was fond of me," she says, echoing her earlier words. "But deep down, he wasn't much more interested in me than Lorena was. After Lorena released him, he never tried to find me." She glances away from the wall, where her gaze has been trained for most of their conversation, and meets his eyes. "There's a difference between what he wants, and what he thinks he wants."

Eric's hand tightens in his lap, the one visible expression of impatience he allows himself. "Miss Vardamom, I don't have time to waste unravelling obscure subtext."

Judith stiffens, then averts her eyes again. "He hates Lorena. But he would do anything he told her. She changed him; not just into a vampire, but into something more like herself than he would ever admit. There is more between them than just the bond of a maker and a child."

Eric stirs uneasily. "If she called him-"

"He would go to her. Without question. That is why I never sought him out after she released us. I can't risk coming to her attention again."

"Then if I do find her-"

"Don't mention me," she says, her tone stern. "Keep me out of it, and we'll be even."

"Understood." He rises.

"You can shelter with me for the day," she says. "I can tell you came here in a hurry."

"That would be-welcome. Thank you."

She leads him to a basement without windows, furnished comfortably, almost like a second home. She points him to a bedroom.

"This girl," she says. "Bill's human. Is she under your protection now?"

"Yes," says Eric without hesitation. Protection is a simple matter, a yes-no question. Feelings don't come into it.

"Then if I were you," she says, stepping through the door of her own room, "I would keep her away from him."

She shuts the door. Eric stares after her for a long moment, before shutting his own behind him.

* * *

There's a text waiting from one of his trial observers when Eric wakes up the next evening. The trial is in recess until Monday; Sid Matt Lancaster has made a successful plea for time to process new evidence. Eric wonders if the evidence he's referring to is the evidence he himself is attempting to collect.

He's back in Bon Temps by midnight, and he reaches Merlotte's Bar and Grill a few minutes after. The bar is closed; Sam Merlotte, the owner, is expecting him.

There's a human girl seated at the bar. Eric has seen her at the trial, sitting behind the defense table, passing notes to Sookie, embracing her before she's led back to her cell each night. He hadn't expected her, but now he thinks that her presence here is a stroke of luck.

"Good evening," he says, and she whirls to face him. "You must be Sookie's friend, Tara."

"I guess I must," she says. She's afraid of him, in an impersonal way-Eric can tell that she cares little for vampires. But her defiance is stronger than her fear. Eric admires that. "Who are you?"

"His name's Eric," says Merlotte, walking into the bar from the back room. "He's here to help Sookie, or so he says."

"And you believed him?" says the girl. "You a stupid man, Sam Merlotte."

Eric favors Tara with a blinding smile. She rolls her eyes. She is very attractive; apparently he's developing a taste for surly human girls.

"As a matter of fact, I have great hopes of securing her release," Eric tells them. "What can you tell me about her relationship with Bill Compton?"

Tara straightens on her barstool and levels a glare at him. "What do you need to know for? You were there when Sookie testified. Yeah, that's right, I saw you. All tall, blonde, and dead."

Eric takes three deliberate steps forward and slips onto the barstool beside Tara. She doesn't flinch.

"You observed the two of them together," says Eric, in a mild voice. "I never did so. Did Bill seem very attached to her?"

Tara snorts. Merlotte frowns.

"Like a lamprey,"says Tara. "Or some kind of drawling, unreconstructed, bloodsucking-"

"Yes, thank you, I think I can complete the parasite metaphor for myself," says Eric. "What about Sookie?"

Tara exchanges glances with Merlotte, and Eric can see the silent agreement that passes between them. There is some significant piece of information that neither of them are going to share with him. He wonders if it would be worth his while to corner Tara when she's by herself; he can't risk glamoring either of them with the other so near.

"She liked him all right," says Merlotte. "They got a lot closer after her grandmother died."

"How did he take it when she left him?"

"He about went O.J. on her," says Tara, in a tone of withering scorn.

"I don't know that it was as bad as that," says Merlotte, looking as though the defense of Compton pains him.

"It was bad enough, with him living next door and her coming home every night to find him creeping around the woods."

"Did he feel betrayed?" Eric inquires in a mild voice, to cover the sudden stab of fury this image creates in him. "Angry? Despondent?"

"I wasn't really paying attention." Tara pours herself a shot of tequila and drains it at a go. "Sookie was all messed up, and I had my hands full with her."

"I wouldn't say he was angry," Merlotte offers. "Frustrated, maybe. Depressed."

"Depressed enough to take his own life?"

"Do vampires do that?" Merlotte looks surprised.

"On occasion," says Eric, in a careless voice. "To some, immortality becomes a burden."

"Bill Compton wasn't about to kill his self over nobody," says Tara. "All that true love shit, he was just putting on a show. If she was really important to him, he'd have told her the truth when she asked him."

"I don't know," says Sam. "He might have, just to make sure she felt guilty for the rest of her life."

"He'd have left her a note," says Tara. "'Oh woe is me, my undead ass hasn't learned how to handle rejection in 200 years.'"

Eric grins. He likes this girl. She is fierce, intelligent, and loyal, a proper friend for Sookie.

Tara slaps her glass down on the bar and gets to her feet. "I'm going home. Vampire, if you get Sookie out of this-"

"Yes?" Eric arches an eyebrow and gives her his most smoldering look.

"Well, I won't spit when I hear your name." She grabs her bag. "See you, Sam."

"Night, Tara."

They watch her leave. A change comes over the atmosphere when he and Merlotte are alone. They look at each other over the bar, two supernatural creatures with a vested interest in the fate of a human girl. Were they rivals, as well? Eric can hardly imagine why Merlotte would undertake to fund Sookie's defense, unless he hopes to take Compton's place in her life. Men are simple creatures in some respects, human, vampire, and shifter alike.

"Sookie tells me that you are assisting her financially," says Eric, noting with satisfaction the anger that flares in the shifter's eyes at this casual mention of her name, and the intimacy it implies. "I would like to relieve you of that burden."

"It's no burden," says Merlotte. "I've known Sookie a long time, I'm happy to help her any way I can."

Eric leans in close over the bar and catches the shifter's eyes. Merlotte blinks once, then twice. His mouth falls slack.

"I would very much like to pay for Sookie's defense myself," he says.

"Um." Merlotte shakes his head. "Sure. That'd be great."

Eric leans back and smiles. "I'll write you a check."


	7. Conspiracies

Eric does not give in to the temptation to pay Sookie another visit when his interview with Merlotte is over. It's almost two in the morning, and she will undoubtedly be asleep. Instead he sends a text message to Chow, instructing him to have a gift basket delivered to her in the morning. This, he hopes, will put her in a properly receptive frame of mind for his visit the following evening.

He returns to his hotel room, and as soon as he's within sight of the doorway he knows that someone is waiting for him. He pauses in the hallway, arranges his features in an expression of bland reserve, then opens the door.

The Queen of Louisiana is seated in the armchair by the bed, examining her nails. Eric pauses just inside the doorway at a respectful distance and waits to be acknowledged.

"Eric." The Queen does not look up. "Why on earth are you sheltering in this flea-infested human hovel?"

Eric takes a step forward and shuts the door behind him.

"I thought it wise to place myself close at hand for the duration of the trial," he says. "As you know, I have an interest in the outcome."

"You already run the largest area in my kingdom," she says. "But if you find yourself with excess time on your hands, perhaps I can find new ways to occupy you."

"Your Majesty-"

"Why is your progeny questioning vampires across the northeastern kingdoms about Bill Compton's maker, Lorena?"

Eric says nothing. Thoughts run through his mind at high speed. He forces himself to relax. If Pam were in danger, he would know.

"The prosecutor is a very young vampire," he says finally. "He does not fully understand the nature of a vampire's relationship with his maker, or he would have sought Lorena out before now. She should be present at the trial. She may even have useful testimony."

The Queen surveys him magisterially from her chair, and her mouth twists in a smile. "It really twisted your dick when the AVL took over the trial, didn't it?"

"Even though the investigation was taken out of my hands, it is still my duty to assist where I can."

"Is that what you're doing? Assisting Baker?"

"I am attempting to get to the bottom of Bill Compton's murder, which is more than the AVL bothered to do in their rush to initiate this-circus."

"Do you know something the AVL doesn't?" The Queen arches a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

Eric weighs his options. Be truthful with the Queen, or obfuscate? He wishes he'd given more thought to a cover story. He's been dangerously unfocused ever since he met Sookie. He's glad Pam isn't here; he can only imagine what she would have to say about his disorganized approach to the matter.

"I have reason to believe that Bill Compton is not dead," he tells her. "I believe he is with Lorena, though I do not know if she forced a summons upon him or if he went to her willingly."

"He'd better be dead, if Lorena knows what's good for her," says the Queen flatly.

Eric blinks. It takes him a moment to process the implications of her statement.

"She is acting under your orders?" he says.

"She's his maker." The Queen shrugs. "I had to go through her, or I would have had to pay a huge fine for having him killed. I assumed she'd be willing enough to dispose of him once she got wind of that blonde he's been fucking."

Eric stares at the Queen. It takes him a moment to find his voice.

"If Compton was killed or taken on your orders, then what, may I ask, is the purpose of trying the girl?"

"She was a plausible suspect." The Queen resumes inspecting her manicure. "The AVL has been chomping at the bit for months now, looking for a chance to demonstrate what law-abiding citizens vampires can be. And I needed leverage over the girl. That was supposed to be Bill's job; I sent him to Bon Temps to secure her for my court. Only he fucked up. Not only did he lose the girl's affections, but afterwards he started guard-dogging her so closely that none of my other servants could get near her. So I sent Lorena to remove him. I admit that framing the girl for the murder was an impulse on my part, but it made the Authority very happy. They're pulling some strings for me with the IRS." She gives him a bright smile. "Everyone's a winner."

Eric has had a millenia of practice controlling his emotions, but tamping down the anger that swells in his chest is still an effort. He slips a hand into his pocket and makes a fist.

"Sookie Stackhouse is a barmaid," he says slowly. "She has no money, no family, no resources. What could you possibly need with leverage against her?"

"She's a telepath." The Queen spreads her hand and sighs with pleasure. "Imagine the possibilities."

Eric decides that now is a good time to sit down. He sits down.

The Queen frowns at him faintly. "Why the face, Eric?"

He struggles with the words that want to come out, shapes them into something less likely to provoke a fight to the death with his monarch. Not that he doubts he would win; he is the oldest and strongest vampire in Louisiana, which is the only reason the Queen is bothering to explain herself to him in the first place. But if he kills Sophie-Ann, he will have no choice but to take her throne, or be killed himself. And he does not want to be King. Not now, at least.

"I fail to see how Miss Stackhouse's telepathy will be of any use to you if she's in prison," he says.

The Queen waves a hand dismissively. "It won't come to that," she says. "Baker's going to offer her a deal. She'll serve in my court, and he'll drop all charges."

For the first time, Eric feels a surge of anger that has nothing to do with his muddled feelings for Sookie. Sophie-Ann is not stupid, but she is not as farsighted as a monarch should be.

"Her lawyer will expose you," he tells her. "This trial will become a public relations nightmare for our kind."

The Queen rolls her eyes. "Honestly, Eric, who do you think you're talking to? The lawyer won't know anything about it, and if she tells him, we'll glamor him. No one will believe her if she talks."

"She won't take the deal." Eric chooses his words carefully, so as not to betray the depth of the study he has made of Sookie's character. "After everything she's been through with Compton and the trial, the thought of serving another vampire will be repugnant to her. Besides that, she's an idealist. And she may yet be exonerated. "

"Please." The Queen gives a delicate snort. "You've lived in the south for more than a hundred years now. No one's going to believe a word out of a fangbanger's mouth. And the vampires on the jury are under orders to force a mistrial if they have to. In the time it takes for a new trial to convene we'll come up with evidence so damning that she'll beg to serve me."

"I believe she might prefer prison."

The Queen seizes an ashtray from the bedside table and hurls it into the television. Eric watches the resulting explosion of glass impassively.

"Then I'll tear her brother's head off and bring her friends' entrails to her in a basket," the Queen snarls. "Honestly, are you trying to piss me off?"

"I am merely trying to serve you with my counsel."

"Fuck your counsel," says the Queen. "Honestly, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were soft on the human."

Eric blinks. Forces himself to smile.

"Does that seem likely?" he says.

The Queen rolls her eyes. She gets to her feet; Eric rises automatically.

"Tell your progeny to find out if Lorena's keeping Bill alive and get back to me." She shoulders her handbag. "And stay away from the trial from now on, I'm tired of watching you pull faces every time Baker opens his mouth."

Eric stands aside as she stalks from the room. He waits long enough to be certain she's gone, then pulls out his phone. He calls Chow first and orders him to put 24-hour security on Sid Matt Lancaster. Then he calls Pam, whose phone goes straight to voicemail.

"The Queen has eyes on you," he tells her. "Lorena took Bill on her orders. Find out if he's still alive, and call me. And watch your back."


	8. Revelation

"I hope you enjoyed the gift basket," says Eric, when he arrives at the jail the next evening.

Sookie doesn't jump when she hears his voice this time. She looks up from her book, and after a moment, sets it aside.

"It was real nice," she says. "You were very thoughtful to send it."

"It was my pleasure." Eric draws up a seat and crosses his legs. He doesn't smile at her. This isn't going to be a pleasant conversation. "I'm sorry I didn't visit yesterday. I've been quite busy."

"That's alright," she says. "It's not like we made a date or anything."

"Didn't we?" He arches an eyebrow. "Let's fix that. Where shall we go when you're released? I know a charming French restaurant in Shreveport. Not that I eat, of course. But I would enjoy watching you eat."

The smile she gives him is patient, and tired. "No offense," she says, "but when I get out of here the only place I want to go is home."

"A night in." He can't help grinning at that. "Sounds wonderful."

Sookie rolls her eyes.

"Did Bill take you on many dates?" Eric asks her.

"I'm not sure how that's any of your business."

"I'm merely trying to determine what league I'm competing in," he says. "I don't want to find myself outclassed by a dead man."

"You'll have to excuse me, Mr Northman." Sookie's voice is flat. "But I'm having trouble thinking about anything other than the fact that I'm about to go to prison for a crime I didn't commit."

"Is that what your lawyer thinks?"

Sookie shrugs. "He tries not to show it. He doesn't want me to worry."

"But you can tell."

"Yeah."

"Because you can read his thoughts."

Sookie tenses. She looks up at him slowly. Eric can hear her heartrate elevating. "Excuse me?"

"You're a telepath," Eric says.

She blinks. A wide, tense smile spreads over her face. "That's crazy," she says, with a nervous laugh. "Telepath, what even is that? You think I'm psychic or something?"

Eric arches an eyebrow and shakes his head reproachfully. "Sookie."

She looks him in the eye for a moment. Then her shoulders slump.

"Alright, fine." Her tone is surly. "I'm a telepath. Call the National Inquirer."

Eric smiles. He never doubted that what the Queen had told him was true, but it is gratifying to hear it from Sookie's own lips.

"What am I thinking now?" he says, and forms a detailed mental image of what he imagines she would look like if she were naked and underneath him.

"No idea," she says flatly, to his disappointment. "I can't read vampires, just humans."

For her sake, Eric thinks, that is just as well. "All humans?"

"Some clearer than others."

"All your life?"

"Yes."

He shakes his head. "What a childhood you must have had."

He's surprised when this idle comment fetches a spark of sincere feeling from her. Something almost like gratitude shows in her face. "You have no idea."

Eric leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Did Bill know?"

"Yes, I told him."

"When?"

"The night he saved me from the Rattrays."

_Fuck him_, Eric thinks. "The night he gave you his blood."

"Yes."

"Did he try to glamor you?"

"Yes."

"How did he react when you proved immune?"

"He was surprised."

_I'll bet he was surprised_, thinks Eric. What a wrench for Bill, finding his pretty human prey so well defended from him that he had to step back and let human thugs create the opening he needed to bring her under his sway. Eric may well kill him for that, if he isn't dead already. If he only he knew whether this would endear him to Sookie, or whether he will need to conceal his revenge from her.

_One way to find out._ "Did you love him?"

"You asked me that before." Sookie folds her arms over her stomach, looking hunched and defensive.

"I'm asking again."

"Yes, I loved him." Her voice grows defiant. "Part of me probably always will."

The strange thing is that Eric believes her, despite the way he knows she must react to what he has to tell her about Bill. In anyone else he would consider such deathless loyalty a sign of weakness, but in Sookie it pleases him. Or would, if it were directed at anyone but Bill.

"Are you sorry he's dead?"

"What kind of question is that?" she bristles.

"Answer it."

"Go to hell."

Eric smiles. "Why do you think he was keeping a file on you?" he inquires, in a mild voice.

Sookie shrugs. "He never said."

"But you must have formed a theory."

"Not really."

"I don't believe that."

"Believe what you want."

No, he won't be doing that. What he wants to believe is that if he took the iron bars dividing them between his hands and wrenched them apart, she would open her arms to him. But they aren't there yet. Allowing himself to believe otherwise will not serve him.

"Do you think he loved you?"

A flash of something like pain in her eyes. He's getting near the heart of the matter now. "What do you care?" she demands.

"I would like to know how he persuaded you to care for him."

Sookie laughs, and there is more than a hint of derision in the sound. "Why, so you can make me want you by doing what he did? That's not how people work."

_If I did as Bill Compton did and gave you my blood, you would soon find out very differently_, he thinks. But he doesn't say it aloud. Instead he smiles, and pitches his voice low.

"Did he compliment you? Tell you that your hair was the color of a sunrise reflected in virgin snow? Did he take you on moonlit strolls through the cemetery between your houses?" She flinches, and Eric restrains the urge to snort. Of course he did. He was like a walking cliche of a vampire.

"Did you find yourself thinking of him, even when you didn't mean to?" Eric's voice grows harder. He is leaving the realm of conjecture for what he knows to be fact. "Didn't you feel drawn to him, almost against your will? Wasn't your desire for him stronger than anything you'd ever felt, like a fire in your skin?"

Sookie's eyes widen, and her face grows pale. She knows what he's driving at; she's very intelligent, if hampered by her narrow upbringing.

"He gave me his blood," she says.

"Yes." Eric lets that stand, lets the implications burrow into her brain.

"You think everything I felt for him was just the blood talking." She blinks, leans back on the bed. "That's crap! You think I don't know the difference between what I feel and something from outside of me, forcing me to feel things?"

"Do you?" says Eric mildly. "Would you like to put it to the test? You could drink my blood and observe for yourself if your feelings for me change."

"Nice try," Sookie snaps.

"Yes, I thought so too." Eric's smile vanishes as quickly as it appears. "Sookie. You don't need my blood to tell you that Bill Compton fucked with your head."

She looks away. He hears her breathing change. He feels a twinge of...something. He hadn't meant to make her cry.

When she speaks again, her voice is ragged. She turns her face away and keeps it averted. "You think if I decide my feelings for Bill weren't real, it's going to make me like you any better?"

_It's a start._ "I think you're so blinded by your loyalty to him that you're afraid to face the truth."

"Maybe you're just jealous."

"Of course I'm jealous." Eric speaks without heat, pronouncing a plain fact. Sookie turns back to look at him, clearly startled by the admission.

"He touched you, tasted you, made love to you. And he used you and abandoned you and left you to rot in this jail. For that alone, I could kill him. I may do it yet."

He hadn't meant to say the last part aloud. He tenses, studying her for a reaction.

She stares at him for a long moment. "Bill's alive?" she whispers. "You know for sure?"

Eric shuts his eyes briefly, a human gesture that rarely comes to him anymore. Is he prepared to tell her the truth? He came here tonight with that intention, but until now he did not have a clear idea of what it would cost him. Still, his habit is to speak the truth unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise.

"Last night I learned that the Queen of Louisiana ordered Bill's maker, Lorena, to kill him, because he defied her orders. I suspect that he is alive and with Lorena still. I sent Pam to find out for sure. I expect her to report soon with news."

Sookie stands up, so quickly that it startles him, though he doesn't let it show.

"The vampires know I didn't kill him," she says, tonelessly.

Eric shrugs. "The Queen and I know, and Lorena. I told Pam. I don't know about Baker. The AVL, as I said before, doesn't care."

A parade of conflicting emotions passes over her face. "You have to tell the judge."

"I can't do that," says Eric immediately. "The Queen is too powerful to oppose openly. It might make her angry enough to kill us both. But I can use what I know to keep you from going to prison."

"How?"

"I'm still figuring that part out."

Sookie sits down again. They gaze at each other silently for a moment.

"You said the Queen wanted him dead because he defied her," she says.

"He failed to complete a mission she gave him, and he prevented her other agents from finishing it for him."

"What was the mission?"

It is Eric's turn to grow silent and thoughtful for a moment. "You never answered my question. Do you think he loved you?"

"That doesn't matter now."

Not to Eric, certainly. No amount of love can redeem such treachery. "It matters very much, both to his failed mission for the Queen, and to what I will do when I find him."

Sookie stares at him, and there's a haggard, haunted look about her eyes. "Yes," she says finally. "He loved me. As much as he knew how to."

In that final qualifier, there is a world of deeper perception than he'd given her credit for. Perhaps she is not as blind as he thought.

"Did Bill ever tell you why he came to Bon Temps?"

"He lived here when he was human. He inherited, or re-inherited, the old family house when Jesse Compton died."

"Is that what he said?"

The relative calm with which Sookie has participated in the conversation up to now cracks apart, like lightning splits the sky.

"Yes!" she yells, throwing her hands up in the air. "Yes, you smug, irritating man! That's what he said to me! Do you know different, or are you just trying to make me crazy?"

"Yes." At Sookie's outraged look, he raises a hand defensively. "I know differently."

Sookie deflates. She looks apprehensive; she knows it's going to be bad. But she lifts her chin and looks him in the eye. "Tell me."

Eric hesitates, before deciding there is no way to soften what he must tell her. He will make a clean strike, and hope there is enough left of her to piece back together afterwards.

"The Queen knows that you are a telepath," he says. "She dispatched Bill to Bon Temps on orders to find you, seduce you, and embroil you so deeply in our world that when Bill presented you to her, you would feel you had no choice but to use your powers in her service."

He watches each word fall upon her like a succession of blows. By the time he is finished, she is still and pale and looks, somehow, smaller than she had before. He resists the urge to look away.

"That's why he had that file on me," she says, in a toneless voice.

"Yes."

Her hands fall dead at her sides. She looks at Eric blankly. "My grandmother died because I was seeing him."

He has read the police reports, and knows what she's referring to. "Yes."

"He let the Rattrays beat me half to death."

It is not that Eric cares about doing Bill Compton justice, but- "I don't know that for certain."

Her eyes widen incredulously. "He must have! He wanted me to drink his blood, and I wouldn't do it."

"He would have been dismayed when he discovered you couldn't be glamored. Forming a blood bond with you was the only way to tie you to him reliably."

"So this is my fault?" her voices rises to a high pitch, and cracks.

"Don't be stupid," he says, his voice harsher than he intends.

She stares at him mutely. Tears well up in her eyes, but she hardly seems to notice them.

"For whatever it's worth," he says, more gently, "when you broke up with him, the Queen sent other vampires to Bon Temps to kidnap you, and Bill killed them. He kept vigil outside your house every night to prevent them taking you."

Sookie takes a deep breath, and sniffs, like she's surprised to find her nose running. She looks down at the floor.

"Why did you tell me all of this?" Her voice is without reproach, too lifeless to be curious.

She is sitting at the very end of the bed, less than a foot from the cell door. Eric rises and reaches his long arm between the bars. He grips her hand before she has a chance to pull away. She tilts her face up to look at him with wide eyes. Eric is just as surprised as she is. In all the time he's spent imagining what it would feel like to touch her for the first time, he never saw it happening this way.

"I told you because you deserve to know the truth," he says. "I may not always be as-forthcoming as you wish, but I will never lie to you."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she says shakily.

His grip on her hand tightens. "It should," he says. "You will always know precisely where you stand with me."

He stands there for a long moment, rubbing his thumb along the inside of her wrist. She looks down at the place where their hands join, and some of the tension seems to leave her body.

Just then, the text message notification on Eric's cell phone chimes. He reaches in his pocket with his free hand and takes the phone out to look at the message. His hand tightens on Sookie's, and she gasps in pain.

"I'm sorry." He drops her hand, and takes a step back from the door.

Sookie looks as though she might yell at him, but her expression changes when her eyes light on his face. "What's wrong?" she says.

"Pam is in trouble." He wants to explain to her why this is important, why Pam's safety must take priority even over comforting her, but he doesn't have the time. And in case, he thinks she will understand.

"I have to find her," he says. "I'll return as soon as I can."

It's probably a mistake, hesitating that last second to reassure her. But then she says, "Good luck," and smiles, and he decides that it was worth it after all.


	9. Witness

The text message that cuts his conversation with Sookie short is from Mitchell, the vampire Pam took north with her as backup. It says, simply, _Lorena has Pam_.

Eric cannot use his cell phone while flying-the wind resistance makes too much static-so he heads for the highway, dialing the number of the vampire who messaged him before he's out of the jailhouse parking lot.

"Tell me," he says, when Mitchell picks up.

"We're in Jackson," he says, familiar enough with the tone Eric is using to know that a brief, thorough precis of the situation is all he wants to hear right now. Excuses and pleading will come later. "Lorena's nest is here. We got a tip in Seattle. Pam went to the house last night to look around and she didn't come back when she said she would."

Eric shuts his eyes. Lorena is older than Pam, he'd known the danger that lay in that fact when he sent Pam to investigate. But she's not dead, and she isn't in any pain; if she were, he would feel it. He forces himself to rememer that and control the icy dread that crawls under his skin.

"How many in the nest?" he says.

"Just the three of them," says Mitchell. "Lorena, Pam, and Bill Compton."

He isn't really surprised that Bill is, in fact, alive, but the news still sends a surge of anticipation through him. "Is he being held against his will?" he asks.

"By silver," says Mitchell.

"What of Pam?"

"Can't tell."

"I'm on my way," he says. "Keep watching the house, call me if anything changes."

* * *

"Now, this is nice," says Pam. She reaches into the closet and draws out a floor length evening gown in baby blue satin. "I had something like this once."

"Oh, yes, I'm very fond of that one." Lorena pauses in arranging her hair to give the dress an approving glance in the mirror. "The color doesn't really suit me."

"I love blue," says Pam. She lays the dress carefully over the end of the bed-it's a vintage piece from 1939 or thereaouts, and requires delicate handling. She begins unbuttoning her blouse to change.

"Ladies." A voice issues from the corner of the room, somewhat muffled because the speaker's head is currently draped in a cast-off gown that Pam had changed into earlier and discarded. "Is my presence really necessary for this?"

"But of course, darling," says Lorena, before Pam can speak. "You have to give us your opinion.

"You're lovely whatever you wear," says Bill, in tones of mute despair.

Lorena pats the last strands of her coiffure into place, then turns and strides across the room. Pam, wriggling into her gown, watches surreptitiously as Lorena plucks the discarded dress off his head, reducing his resemblance a hatstand. She cups the side of his face tenderly, and he gives a weak smile. Then her face hardens, and she slaps him.

"Don't think flattery is going to win you any points," she tells him. "You're going to spend the next hundred years making up for humiliating me with that little blonde bloodbag."

Pam turns casually to the mirror and reaches for a brush. While Lorena's back is turned, she measures the proximity of anything wooden in the room that could be converted for use as a stake in a fight. She doesn't think that Lorena is going to kill Bill, at least not right this moment, but Pam's job is to keep Bill alive until Eric decides what to do with him, and he won't be amused if she has to tell him that she let Lorena stake his new human pet's ticket to freedom because she was distracted playing dress-up.

Eric will be here soon enough. Mitchell will have called him when he woke this evening and found she hadn't returned. Pam would have called Eric herself, but there hasn't really been a moment. She hadn't precisely planned to infiltrate Lorena's nest; it had been a spur of the moment thing, knocking on the door and introducing herself. Lorena's an old vampire, and she didn't get that way by trusting people. But Pam told her that Eric had sent her with a warning that the Queen was suspicious that Bill was still alive, and that he, Eric, wanted Pam to help ensure that Bill stayed safely out of sight until after the trial was over. Lorena had seemed to find this story plausible enough, especially after Bill had snarled at Pam, and after that a few well chosen compliments for Lorena's house and wardrobe had been sufficient to earn her an invitation to shelter there for the day.

It's not that Pam isn't enjoying herself-Bill Compton is an annoying little man, and it's a pleasure to see him put in his place-but it's still a relief when, a moment later, she feels the frisson up her spine that means Eric is near, and calling her.

"I'll just step into the kitchen and get myself a blood," she says, though Lorena and Bill are too busy making out to hear her.

Pam runs top speed to the front door and opens it to find Eric, staring at her (and, she thinks smugly, her decolletage) with an expression of consternation.

"Pam," he says warily. "Are you alright?"

"Eric, thank God." She tugs on his arm and pulls him into the house. "Come and kill this tiresome bitch so we can get out of here."

* * *

A half-hour later, Eric and Pam haul Bill into the trunk of the Corvette. He's still bound, snarling, and soaking wet (Pam had dumped him in the shower to rinse off Lorena's blood, as Eric had staked her while she was still straddling him) but once the lid is down and they're on the road they can barely hear him.

"I commend your ingenuity," Eric told Pam, in a quiet voice. She can hear the pride and satisfaction in his word, and she preens.

"At least I got this dress out of the bargain," she says. "I thought about cleaning out her closet, but that might make it too obvious I was there."

"You can buy a whole new wardrobe on the Fangtasia card," he says.

Pam brightens. "Can I wear it to work?"

Eric smirks over the wheel. "As long as it's black."

* * *

They arrive at Eric's house a few hours later, with an hour or so left until dawn. Eric has Pam help him bring Bill inside, then he sends her to her own home with instructions to appear at the courthouse for the trial tomorrow evening.

"How's the girl holding up?" she asks, in a voice of casual unconcern, as she's headed out the door.

"She'll be better tomorrow," says Eric.

When Pam is safely on her way, Eric turns to Bill, who is seated on the couch with his hands bound in front of him. Bill glares up.

"I heard that," says Bill. "What is your interest in Sookie?"

"Yes," says Eric. "We are going to talk about Sookie. About what you've done to her. And how you're going to fix it."

He smiles. Bill blanches.


	10. Examination

Bill has been in a number of uncomfortable, untenable situations in his life. Over a century and a half with Lorena as his maker means that he long ago gave up on any notion that he has a right to things like boundaries. Immortality has a price. Bill is a vampire, at the service of vampires more powerful than he. They command, he obeys. Once, only once, has he dared to choose for himself.

He chose Sookie. He chose to defy the Queen for a human. He'd been prepared to lay down his life for her. But in the end, his life had not been required of him.

The rage, the humiliation of sitting here in handcuffs, while Eric Northman talks about Sookie as though he knows her, is enough to make Bill regret this fact.

"How do you even _know_ Sookie?" Bill demands, glaring up at Eric from his chair. He'd heard Pam speak of her to Eric in a tone that insinuated-much. Bill had strained every nerve, every fiber to keep Sookie away from other vampires, because he had known what the result would be. Now it's all for nothing. Eric is a thousand years old, an expert at getting what he wants. Perhaps Bill should have spent more time with him before now, to learn how he manages it.

Eric lowers himself into a chair across from him, arms and legs sprawled in an attitude suggestive of perfect confidence.

"I went to see her." Eric gives him a smile. Bill is prepared to read it as taunting, but really it is-cold. "The day she gave testimony. I came to her cell afterwards."

"Your fangbangers leave you so dissatisfied that you must take a girl being tried for her life as your prey?" Bill barely restrains the snarl.

"Don't be a hypocrite, Bill, I find it tiresome." Eric leans forward a few degrees. "If anyone preyed on her, it was you. I merely offered her some assistance."

"You come to her with offers of help when she is at her most vulnerable and undefended, and you do not call that predation? She's just a girl, she doesn't understand the nature of a vampire's _assistance_."

"Oh, I think she does." There's no mistaking it this time; Eric's smile is glacial. "I think you taught her that."

Bill averts his eyes, and struggles to control his features. Shame boils up, hot and thick in his throat. _So Eric knows._ He is afraid to ask if Sookie knows as well, in case she doesn't and the idea takes Eric's fancy.

"I sought her out because after listening to her testify, I knew she was innocent." Eric leans back in his chair. "She was given a chance to speak for herself, and she chose instead to speak for you. I was...intrigued."

"What did she say?" Bill cannot help himself; his question follows Eric's statement with indecent haste. He has a flash of Sookie as she must have looked in the witness stand, fragile and passionate, fierce and beautiful. Her lawyer must have vilified him, the better to make her look a victim. And she, bless her heart, would not let the slander stand. Because she didn't know it was true, all of it, the very worst that her lawyer could think or dream up to say about him.

Eric does not answer his question. Instead, he gets to his feet and begins to stroll up and down the length of the room, still looking casual. "Did you know about the trial?" he asks, in a mild voice.

"Lorena told me," says Bill, hearing the weariness in his own voice, all the fight draining from him. "To torment me. I didn't know how much to believe."

"From Sookie's point of view, I imagine it's quite as bad as anything Lorena could have invented."

"Are they seeking the death penalty?"

"Baker is making noises about it, but in reality he has no intention of letting it get to that point. He's under orders from the Queen to strike a bargain with Sookie: the charges will be dropped, and Sookie will serve the Queen for the rest of her life."

For the first time since Lorena came for him, Bill smiles and means it, though the smile is a grim one. "She will never agree," he says. "She'll refuse on principle."

"Which is what I told the Queen, who promised to kill everyone she loves, if that's what it takes to cow her."

Bill shuts his eyes briefly. Tries, and fails, not to picture Sookie's face the night her grandmother was murdered. "Then Sookie's innocence must be demonstrated publically, so that the Queen has no leverage against her," he says. "Release me, and I will go directly to Bon Temps and present myself to the police. They know me there, they'll let her go."

"There's no such thing as public at 6 o'clock in the morning, Bill." Eric actually rolls his eyes. "And I have no intention of releasing you until we've come to an understanding."

"What sort of understanding?" says Bill, between his teeth.

Eric gives him a long, considering look. When he starts to speak again, it is in a voice of toneless formality.

"Sookie Stackhouse is under my protection now. When she is released, you will not importune her by protesting your love. You will not beg her to take you back. In short, you will not make a nuisance of yourself. Are we clear?"

If Bill had not been tied to the chair, he would have walked from the room, or hit Eric. He stares up at the older vampire in mute rage.

Eric watches his face for a long moment. "Do you love her?" he asks, a faint trace of curiosity buried under a thick layer of indifference. "Truly?"

Bill's nostrils flare. "That is none of your business."

Eric shrugs. "It would bring Sookie peace of mind, if she were certain, one way or another."

"Then I will tell her when I see her."

Eric gives him a pitying look, and a brief shake of the head. "Anything you say to her now will be suspect."

The certainty comes to settle in his stomach, heavy as a stone. "She knows I was working for the Queen."

"Yes."

"You told her?"

"Yes."

Bill shuts his eyes briefly. "Fuck you."

"Answer my question."

"Of couse I love her," Bill grates. "I defied the Queen for her. I killed vampires for her."

"And for how long have you loved her?" Eric's brow furrows over his eyes. Bill is sure that most of his earnest look is mockery. "Since she saved you from the drainers? Or since the night you stood back and let them beat her to death so that you could give her your blood?"

"Soon after." Bill stares at the floor, overcome by the memory. "The night her grandmother died. I felt her fear like a knife in my gut, and I knew then I could never lose her."

"Charming. Sookie will be delighted, I'm sure."

The words fall hard on Bill's ear, but even in the midst of his distress he notices something odd. Eric has a right to be angry at the discovery that the Queen was hatching schemes in his area without his knowledge, but there is something more than mere professional aggrievement in Eric's tone. Bill narrows his eyes.

"Is she yours now?" he demands.

"Yes." Eric's answer is simple, unhesitating, and yet-

"Does she agree?" says Bill, allowing his skepticism to be audible.

He's rewarded by a flicker of uncertainty in Eric's expression. "We're getting there," he says smoothly.

Bill's smile stretches his face in unprecedented ways. "Oh," he says. "Oh my. Eric Northman, I do believe a human girl is teaching you your place."

Eric scowls, but he makes no immediate denial, which tells Bill everything he needs to know.

"I could have told you Sookie wasn't just going to let you fold her into your retinue. What did you do, waltz into her cell and announce that she was yours now?" Eric flinches, and Bill laughs. "Oh my, I see you did. I would have liked to be there to see the look on her face."

"You will respect my authority in this matter." Eric cuts across his words in a harsh voice. "You will not speak to her unless she speaks to you first." Eric gives him a grim little smile. "And I do not think she will speak to you, Bill."

Abruptly, nothing about the scenario is funny anymore. Bill and Eric stare at each other for a minute.

"Do you, at least, care for her some?" Bill forces himself to ask, after a moment.

Eric steps back, stands straight. "I respect her," he says coolly. "Which is more, I think, than you can say for yourself, even now."

Bill does not have time to phrase a response to this before Eric has started on his way out the door.

"Rest well," Eric calls through the door. "We have work ahead of us tomorrow."

The lights in the room go out. Bill sits in his chair, his hands tied behind his back, and waits for the heavy pull of daylight to sweep his head clean of the rage, regret, and shame nesting there.


End file.
